Having discussed how much I love the Over Our Heads era over the past few days, I put in my VHS tapes last night and go through some episodes. I watched "Doo-Wah," the El DeBarge episode and "Come Back to the Truck Stop Natalie Green, Natalie Green."

"Doo-Wah" I honestly didn't like very much, but even when I was 13 and saw it for the first time I didn't like it. There were maybe 4 funny lines in the entire episode in my opinion. Not a great quality episode.

"Come Back..." was a better episode, but I didn't find it to be very funny either. Great idea, and a fun episode, I just didn't find the writing funny. I felt like most of the parts that were supposed to be funny were all forced, one-liners. In both episodes. I honestly didn't find myself laughing at all.

Tootie was also SO annoying to me I couldn't stand it. When I used to be obsessed with this show many years ago, people on here always said how annoying they thought she was and I never saw it. Now I do. At this point in the series she was supposed to be what, about 18, 19? It felt like she was still the same 12-year old Tootie. Whiney, annoying, and bossy. Even in the first season she wasn't like this. It seemed to get worse as she got older.

And George Clooney? Look, I understand that he was brought in to add the 'male' aspect of the show and to spice things up, and maintain/boost ratings. But did he have to be in every damn scene!? This was a show about 4 young women and Mrs. G. Throughout all of the El D episode, it seemed like he had more lines than half of the girls did. And why in the world would he have gone with them to the recording studio?! It doesn't make any sense. He was way over-used and completely unnecessary.

Overall in these two episodes, mostly the El DeBarge one, I felt like the writers didn't stay true to the characters. They all felt like the same person. Each had their fair share of sarcastic one-liners, and I felt like most of their diologue could have been swapped between each character and it wouldn't have made a difference. To me, that's not how it should be. For the most part, a character should only be saying something THEY would say. If I were a new-comer and that had been the first episode I watched, well I probably wouldn't watch the show again, BUT I wouldn't know which character was "the funny one," "the gossip," "the rich girl" or "the tom boy." I'm not saying that they had to be extremely obvious and over-characterize the girls, but something would have been nice. The writing was just bad for that episode.

NOW PLEASE DON'T BASH ME. Lol. I LOVE the show and I have for the past 9 years. I'm just wondering if A. it's not as funny as I remember it. B. It's just not as good as I remember it. or C. it just started going down-hill after season 7. I suspect it's a combination of all three.

SOOO my goal is over the next few months is to watch a few episodes over night and sort of make a review of the entire seiries. Start from episode 1 and end at 209 and see how it goes.

Opinions would be great!?

Okay, first off. I have to say you have had the best posts on here lately. I haven't posted so much in a long time.

Awwww, you didn't like "Doo Wah"?!? That's okay, I still like ya. :p But I think the humor from the episode for me, at least, comes from nostalgia. The episode is a bit awkward and it did occur to me that the character of George didn't need to be there. But I did think Tootie was really funny in the episode because she was trying to fit in. And the part where she tries to mouth off to the other girls and can only come up with "Oh SURE!" :D And how could you not LOOOVE Natalie's outfit?!?! The blue suit with the bow in her hair?!? From a simple visualistic look at the show, it got so colorful in those Over Our Heads episodes.

I completely agree with what you said about a character only saying something THEY would say. Sometimes inserting a funny joke here and there to fill out a script can work against the story if it's just thrown in without and credibility. I have to watch that episode again and see if I pick up on that in the dialogue.

Not even sure if I helped in your critique but that's my 2 cents for the cause.

And bash you??? We're FOL-ers. We would never bash you. Maybe we'd get Jo to rough you up a little but never bash you. :lol:
:)

Well thanks for the compliment. It's been a long time since I've visited SO and the FOL board, so it's nice to be back and posting. I agree with most of what you said as well. Tootie did have her funny moments, but most of her lines just annoyed me.

Lol Natalie's outfit was awesome! But my favorite was Blair's tight black and white sweater. She looked really sexy. I also LOVE her hair around that time period, my favorite do of hers during the entire series.

Also the part where she sing's "My Boyfriend's Back" was classic. That was a great Blair moment, very true to her character. And Jo's reaction was hysterical as well. The episode had it's great moments, but overall I just felt it didn't live up to the majority of the other episodes.

And as far as Mrs. Garrett goes, she was one of my favorite characters. I understand that Rae felt she wasn't needed as much in the 7th season, but it would have been nice if instead of giving her 30-second bits throughout the episode, if she had one full scene. This is true though for a lot of the episodes that season. I missed her being the moral center of the show. Although it was nice to watch the girls grow and face situations on their own, I just wish Mrs. G was given better material during her little time on screen.

Lol and I only included the bashing warning because 7, 8 years ago when I was on here, if anyone said ANYTHING negative about the show, you were immediately thrown under the bus by everyone on here. Lol. I'm glad we're at the point where we can have a discussion on here without the bashing.

And Jo can take me on anytime.... ;)

The only thing I noticed about the El Dabarge ep was the interactiong between Jo and George...also Blair's line "We never could afford a radio."

Overall I thought that eposide was so corny...so 80s.

I will def agree with u in saying that Tootie was very annoying and whiney at times. In my opinion, she was the weakest link on the show. not that i didnt like her. her lines got better (a lot better) in the later seasons but for a while it just got really annoying.

To that subject...Tootie always annoyed me...in season 8 and 9 you are right she got better roles and "Matured" but she was always snooping and wineing....but in the earlier ep Jo also had that wine going on when she got mad..maybe it had to do with the facts they werer both young....I hated the wine.

Jo: Blair, if you like that song, why are you doing that to it? :lol:

Jo was never annoying tho. and I think she was just trying to get on Blair's nerves. I never thought Jo was whiny

It was only in a few eps when she was young...usually when she got mad... ;)

Tootie wins the award for most whiny tho. I never once thought that with Jo. and even if she was complaining, it was always funny

I never once thought that with Jo. and even if she was complaining, it was always funny
It was funny. I like the episode where they are making pizza according to Jo's recipe (from her mother, I think) and they aren't doing it right. Jo's reaction is priceless. :D

I think Doo Wah is one of my fave FOL episodes ever..it just cracks me up and I love the characters zinging one another!! But hey, FOLRocks, you're entitled to your opinion.....however wrong it may be! :lol: j/k

I'm so missing seeing any FOL anywhere.

Hi everybody. :D It's been WAY too long, I know. I'm having A LOT of trouble getting my Internet service fixed, plus I have really been sick this past month, which is why I haven't posted in such a long time. I'm hoping to have Internet service again sometime next week. Right now I'm online at my county library.

Anyway, I just want to say that I could not agree with the poster of this thread (so sorry, I forgot your name!) any more. It's been ages since I've seen the later episodes you're talking about, and I'm sure I'm going to be bashed myself for saying this, but it's my own personal opinion that Facts basically started going downhill at season 7. I TOTALLY understand why Charlotte Rae left. After all, Facts was about four young girls growing up into women. Well pretty much at the end of season 6 and the beginning of season 7, they've already done that. Blair and Jo are juniors in Langley College and Nat's working on her own in the world, finding herself with her writing and life experiences and everything, and Tootie's a senior at Eastland. It becomes so blatantly obvious, especially by season 7, that Mrs. Garrett's job is done. The girls are at that point totally facing their life problems/struggles on their own and, as Charlotte Rae said on E! True Hollywood Story, the girls were confiding much more in each other than they were in Mrs. Garrett. Again, I'm sure this opinion is not going to be a very popular one, but I personally think that the Facts actresses were INSANE to even THINK of continuing the show without Mrs. Garrett. Beverly Ann?!?!?! What are they...KIDDING?!?!?! Excuse me, but was Facts or was it not supposed to be a spinoff of Diff'rent Strokes focusing on MRS. GARRETT as the centerpiece????? What's the point of having a show if the main character it was built around in the first place starts becoming diminished over the years and eventually leaves the show??? It's never said on the show, but come on, here...we all know that Mrs. Garrett was more of a parent and a mother to those girls than their own parents, and after Tootie, the youngest, grows up, well...hasn't Mrs. Garrett kind of served her purpose??? And since the show was built around Mrs. Garrett, after Mrs. Garrett leaves, shouldn't the show have just been allowed to rest in peace? It was so obvious that Facts was dying, ESPECIALLY from seasons 6-9 when they had to add all these new characters to try and boost ratings...Andy, George, Pippa...and didn't the directors/producers whoever was in charge behind the scenes have to GET RID of the surplus of characters in the beginning because it was too hard for audiences to focus on the cast? I am so sorry...I'm sure I'll get some zingers for this, LOL, but in my not-so-humble opinion :lol: I think that Out of Peekskill 1 and 2 should have been the last episodes, minus the ridiculous Beverly Ann...Mrs. Garrett is reunited with the love of her life, Bruce, and finds a new life for herself in Africa now that she has raised her girls...Tootie starts college...we all know that eventually Nat will return to college...Blair and Jo finish college and Blair moves on to a career in law and Jo moves on to a career in education, we cry our eyes out when Mrs. G. leaves and the girls move on then we turn off the set and hunt through our old tapes or DVDs for the first eps of Facts so that our period of mourning doesn't last too long...LOL...and we enjoy the first eps again and then go eat supper or something. :lol:

Okay, I have said WAY too much...I am in SO MUCH TROUBLE! :lol: Like I said, I know that opinion is not going to be popular AT ALL, but I do want it understood, everybody, that just because I see season 6 as the last strong year of Facts and I don't really like the later seasons, I'm still just as much a fan as you guys are. I LOVE Facts and I LOVE Mrs. Garrett and the girls. Okay, okay, I have issues with Beverly Ann, but come on...you can't win 'em all! :lol:

Take care everybody! :) I'm glad to be back on the boards again, at least for today. I REALLY hope to be back for good next week. Anyway, see everybody later. :)

Hi LoveMrsG, it's great to see you back here! :D

While I did like a lot of the episodes from season 7 and onward, after seeing nearly all of the eps, I do agree that the show should've ended at Out Of Peekskill (minus all the Beverly Ann stuff). FOL got started all because of Charlotte Rae/Mrs. G originally. She was the main focus of everything. So for the show to continue on without her almost didn't seem...right. Especially when they brought in Beverly Ann. I didn't like her from the moment I saw her. She just didn't have that same charm or wit that Mrs. Garrett had and the show kind of shifted gears as well when she came on.

I'm also not sure why the producers wanted to replace Mrs. G with Beverly Ann. Like you said, by that point the girls were already grown up and dealing with their problems all on their own (this was evident in the show a lot) and going to school and working, that sort of thing. I think it would've been interesting if instead of bringing in Beverly Ann, to see the girls living in the house by themselves and living life together on their own with no Mrs. G or housemother figure. It'd been done already in many episodes where Mrs. G was "out of town" and they all seemed to handle themselves okay; I think they could've done it that way until the show's end :) . There was no need for them to have a caregiver at that point in their lives.

As far as those additional characters go... I never minded Andy (kind of like the little brother) but I didn't care for George or Pippa. The girl-power! part of me just wanted George to GTFO because he was a guy and he ruined the all-girl/chick flick vibe of the show (I know they added him for that "touch of testosterone" but the guy was creepy) and Pippa just added the final nail in the coffin for FOL. She was just a pain with an accent :lol:. Couldn't stand her at all.

Well it seems to me that most of us are in agreement, which I'm glad lol. Some of my favorite episodes are from the later seasons, and there were aspects that I loved.

LoveMrsG, I couldn't agree more. There was no need for a Mrs. Garrett replacement. Or George or Pippa. Ever. But hey, it's The Facts of Life and we love it for what it is, no matter how silly the porducer's ideas seemed.

And FWIW, the ratings really didn't do a big slide til the 9th season :D

first of all, my goodness, I haven't been on here in so long...secondly, OMG, FOLrocks1--I agree with you so much!

Doo Wah was not a great episode, but it did have some funny parts. My very efavorite line is when Blair says "My parents couldn't afford a radio." I laughed about that for days :lol:

As for "Come Back," you're pretty spot on. The only out loud funny part I remember about it is when Nat is talking to Blair's rich girl character. She says, "Hi, I'm Natalie Green. And you are...fond of sugar." I loved that. But other than that, I don't know, it just didn't seem that well written. It could have been so much better.

And Tootie??? I'm not going to lie (and I've said this before on here), I almost hated Tootie after season 3. All she did in seasons 4-6 six was scream and whine, and all she did from seasons 7-9 was whine and whine some more. She really had the most annoying voice ever :mad:

I totally agree about all the crappy extra characters, too. Beginning with Andy, every new person they brought on for more than two episodes sucked. Andy, Beverly Ann, George, Pippa? They all made me angry! Hahaha.

In a continuation of that thought, I really wish they hadn't added Beverly Ann. Granted, she isn't the only reason FOL jumped the shark, it was headed that way anyway because of the crappy writing, but she was damn well a major reason. Don't get me wrong, Cloris Leachman is a wonderful actress, and Beverly Ann had a few bits that made me laugh long and hard (case in point, the bit in "Another Room" where she plays that little verbal matching game with Blair. "Bingo...and Catholics!" :lol: ). All that aside, there was no real need for Beverly Ann. By the time she arrived, all the girls were old another to take care of themselves. Charlotte Rae was right, the girls didn't "need" her anymore, so why the hell did the show writers have to shove in Beverly Ann?

As far as the overall quality of the show, yeah, it was cheesy and kitschy and all that. The plots and storylines weren't really that great, especially towards the end of the series, but what made the show magical was the actresses. Charlotte Rae, Lisa Whelchel, Nancy McKeon, Mindy Cohn, and yes, Kim Fields had a super amazing chemistry and just acted well together.

So this turned out a whole lot longer than I intended, but that's what happens when I started talking about my favorite show!

hi there, Pain!!!!!!!! Long time!!!!!!!! :wave:

and I'll forgive for all what you wrote...... :lol: j/k

hi there, Pain!!!!!!!! Long time!!!!!!!! :wave:

and I'll forgive for all what you wrote...... :lol: j/k

Hey Jude! :wave: yeah it's been awhile

thanks for the forgiveness and understanding :lol:

Well I'm glad that you agree with me as well. I have to say that everything you said makes sense :)